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Welcome to Dr. Colleen McCabe, Wisconsin’s New State CTE Director!

September 5th, 2017

Earlier this year, Colleen McCabe was visiting the Wisconsin state capitol to meet with legislators about funding for her local school district, or as she describes it, “happily minding my own business.”

That’s when she got a text from a close friend, Morna Foy, who also happens to be the president of the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS). Foy asked McCabe to consider joining her at WTCS as Provost and Vice President of Student Affairs.

McCabe knew this would require her to fill the very big shoes of Kathy Cullen, who was retiring after having served in that role for more than a decade. Ultimately, she accepted and was named to the position in early August.

As she settles into her new role, McCabe said she is looking forward to learning more about the shape and history of the technical college system, and using her well-honed skills of innovation and collaboration to look across the system to make sure WTCS is best serving their learners.

Starting from her time as a college athlete and later a coach, McCabe said she believes in understanding the individual gifts of each player or student, rather than trying to force them into a prescribed system. Her greatest coaching challenge came when she served as the coach for a high school boys’ basketball team.

“Working with 19 ninth grade boys, you learn a lot about how to get your message across and get people working together toward a common goal,” she said.

McCabe began her career in education teaching high school health and physical education in Wisconsin. She went on to get her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, from St. Mary’s, Winona, because she wanted to work to help integrate health skills and competencies across discipline areas in education. After 14 years of K-12 instruction, she joined the University of Wisconsin-Platteville as an assistant volleyball coach and lecturer. During her 17 years at the Platteville campus, she completed her doctorate in educational leadership, from Edgewood College and then entered into a faculty role, where she continued to teach and served as department chair of Health and Human Performance for 14 years.

McCabe also consulted with the state’s Department of Public Instruction on their health education initiative to help K-12 educators revamp their curricula to focus on the development of the health-related skills, through use of content activities and assessments. This “Skills are the Units” concept prompts developmental learning so that students know how to use health content effectively throughout life. Because of her work in both K-12 and teacher education training, the Wisconsin Health and Physical Education Association, honored her as the 2014 Health Educator of the Year.

Now at WTCS, she plans to leverage all of this experience to keep the technical college system on the cutting edge. She noted to support the vision, planning, and work needed to remain a leader in career and technical education requires the ability to adapt and make changes.

“Change is hard,” McCabe said. “No one welcomes it, even the minute changes. I believe my role at WTCS is about supporting people when they have to get out of their comfort zone when change is needed.”

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate, Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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Welcome to Chad Maclin, DC’s new State CTE Director!

August 15th, 2017

Chad Maclin grew up in Fairfax, Virginia, in a family full of educators. He knew from a young age that he also wanted to become a teacher, but it wasn’t until a high school drafting class that he realized he wanted to teach Career Technical Education (CTE).

“CTE is where I felt most comfortable in school. It was my favorite class,” Maclin said.

Maclin also recognized that it wasn’t just the drafting class that made an impact, it was the teacher.

“He made geometry make sense to me through drafting,” he said. “This course was offering me more than content. It was the through-lines to understand how these other classes mattered.”

Maclin went on to receive his CTE teaching degree from Old Dominion University, and began his teaching career in Tampa, Florida.  A few years later, he returned to his hometown of Fairfax to teach technology education courses.

“I wanted to make my class the favorite class where students could go to make sense of their core academics,” he said.

Over the next two decades, Maclin served as a CTE teacher and administrator for Fairfax County Public Schools. He earned his Master’s Degree from George Mason University and he also served as president for the Virginia Association of Career and Technical Education.

In July, he moved into a new role when he was chosen to be the State CTE Director for the District of Columbia. Maclin said he was excited about this incredible opportunity, and is looking to increase CTE dual enrollment participation, engage with local and regional business leaders to determine which industry certifications that are meaningful and recognized, and bolster student engagement and learning through Career Technical Student Organizations.

Maclin said he also wants to make sure CTE programs are promoted far and wide so students and parents can make the most informed choices.

“So many times we hear, ‘I didn’t know schools offered that,’” Maclin said. “I’ve heard it for 20 years. I want to help students and parents know those options are out there.”

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate, Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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Welcome to Chris Deaton, Indiana’s New State CTE Director!

August 9th, 2017

Nearly 17 years ago, Chris Deaton’s first real job out of college was with the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, where he expected to do accounting and operations work for a federal grant he knew little about at the time – the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins).

About two weeks in, his supervisor asked him to take over the office’s data collection and accountability responsibilities. Though he didn’t have much experience doing data and accountability work, he set out to teach himself whatever was necessary to do the job.

Soon after, Deaton realized Career Technical Education (CTE) had its hooks in him.

“It didn’t take me very long, but I fell in love with it. I could have left several times but I just can’t,” Deaton said. “I became very passionate about CTE and the students, what we can do for them, and how we can benefit the economy [through CTE].”

In July, Deaton was named as the State CTE Director at the Indiana Department of Education. While there is always some learning curve to any new job, Deaton feels at home in his new office, because in some ways, what’s new is actually old. That’s because for several years, Deaton’s former office at the Department of Workforce Development was the eligible state agency for the state’s Perkins grant. Now that the Department of Education serves as the Perkins eligible agency, Deaton said he is settling back into the familiar work.

Deaton said he is excited about the work ahead, which includes a major initiative to overhaul the state’s career pathways. The effort will require engaging key stakeholders across the state to reimagine how these should look to ensure every high school student has access to a true career pathway.

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate, Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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Welcome to Harold Mackin, Connecticut’s New State CTE Director!

June 26th, 2017

If someone had told Harold Mackin 10 years ago that he would one day be the State CTE Director of Connecticut, he would have thought the person was crazy.

That’s because Mackin was firmly settled as a district-level director for Career Technical Education (CTE) in Washington state, where he had been born and raised and taught CTE for nearly 24 years. Yet as his youngest of five daughters was entering third grade, Mackin began to ponder his own future, and that set him on a course that eventually led him to interview and apply for an agricultural education position in the state CTE office in Connecticut.

The day of his interview was the first day he had set foot in New England. That was seven years ago, and now Mackin has been tapped as the State CTE Director. Moving from the local to state level was certainly a shift, Mackin said.

“When I first arrived, the learning curve wasn’t a curve at all,” he said. “The line was 180 degrees that went straight up.”

In those seven years, the state CTE office, which had seven staff members when he arrived, has changed significantly with retirements and budget shortfalls, and now has two staff members.

Despite those changes, Mackin said he sees opportunities to raise the profile of CTE in Connecticut, where the Ivy League schools dominate students’ post-high school plans. He hopes to bridge the divide between academic and technical courses through the state’s mastery-based learning initiatives. He said this work could bring more contextualized instruction into academic teaching and more academic recognition to technical courses.

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate for Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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Welcome to Arizona’s New State CTE Director, Cathie Raymond

May 1st, 2017

Cathie Raymond had her mind made up at 14 years old while sitting in her home economics class – she was going to teach Career Technical Education (CTE) when she grew up. And for 43 years, she did exactly that, first in Missouri and then in Arizona.

Now she’s ready for a new challenge. In April, she became the State CTE Director for Arizona, and said she’s excited to leverage her years of experience in the field to help more teachers.

“My whole goal is make everyone’s job easier,” Raymond said. “Just because it’s always been done that way – is it the best way? [I want to do] anything I can to help the local directors to make sure they aren’t so overwhelmed and they don’t have to put things on their teachers, who are overwhelmed. I want to help them free up more time for teachers to teach and focus on their students.”

Raymond said she hopes to find more ways to tell the story of CTE in Arizona by better leveraging the data of student’s successes including and beyond graduation rates.

For the past decade, Raymond has served as the CTE director for Marana Unified School District, which is located near Tucson, Arizona. The district has the largest land mass of any in the state – 550 square miles.

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate for Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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Welcome to Alaska’s New State CTE Director, Deborah Riddle!

March 28th, 2017

Deborah Riddle was born in Glennallen, Alaska, and raised near Bristol Bay, on the western coast of the state. When she made her way many years later to southern Utah to be a teacher, there was one problem – it was just too hot.

So Riddle and her husband began looking for jobs back home in Alaska, and as a back-up plan, “as close to the Canadian border as possible,” she said.

That led her to Simms, Montana, to teach middle school math and science. When the school district also needed someone to teach Career Technical Education (CTE), Riddle stepped up. What first began with teaching traditional home economics classes then grew into robotics classes and even helping start and support related Career Technical Student Organizations (CTSOs) at the local high school.

After 15 years in Montana, home was still calling, so Riddle took a position with the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development. She started at the State department five years ago doing school improvement focusing on mathematics. For the past year, Riddle has managed the state’s federal funding under Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The state department recently reorganized, and with those changes, Riddle’s responsibilities expanded, including the title of State CTE Director and responsibilities of managing another source of federal funding through the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins).

Riddle said she is excited by the prospects of making connections across the federal education laws to maximize funding and other opportunities for Alaska’s students. Since being named the State Director in February, she has been learning all that she can about CTE in Alaska, and said she has been so impressed by the depth and diversity of the stakeholder support she sees for CTE at the local level, especially the connections to employers, community colleges and workforce development.

“I knew there were partnerships, but I didn’t realize how many and how varied there were and what (stakeholder engagement) can really add to a program,” she said.

Riddle said she is also looking to bolster CTSOs in Alaska and continuing to strengthen and overcome the unique challenges to offering CTE for the state’s most rural schools.

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate, Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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Getting to Know… Missouri

March 7th, 2017

Note: This is part of Advance CTE’s blog series, “Getting to Know…” We are using this series to help our readers learn more about specific states, State CTE Directors, partners and more.

State Name: Missouri

State CTE Director: Dr. Blaine Henningsen, Assistant Commissioner, Office of College and Career Readiness, Department of Elementary & Secondary Education

About Missouri: The issue keeping state leaders in Missouri’s Office of College and Career Readiness up at night is figuring out how to ensure quality in Career Technical Education (CTE) programs across the state. Missouri is home to 57 area career centers, 450 comprehensive high schools, 12 community college districts and one state technical college that provide CTE courses to more than 244,000 students combined. As in other states, quality varies from district to district. That’s why, in 2013, Missouri worked to identify the menu of indicators that best reflect high-quality CTE programs. Eventually, the Office of College and Career Readiness settled on six criteria to guide and promote quality, called the “Common Criteria and Quality Indicators,” which were launched publicly in 2015. The indicators describe necessary components related to curriculum, instruction, assessment and more.

At the moment, the Quality Indicators carry no weight in the state’s accountability or funding structure, though Missouri is redesigning its CTE funding formula to better integrate and promote the six criteria. The plan is to roll out an updated formula in the 2018-19 school year to ensure state funds go to support quality programs. In the meantime, the Quality Indicators framework is available as a self-evaluation tool for local programs.

Programs of Study: Missouri’s programs of study follow the national Career Clusters framework and are further organized into six content areas:

  • Agricultural Education;
  • Business, Marketing and Informational Technology Education;
  • Family Consumer Sciences and Human Services Education;
  • Health Sciences;
  • Skilled Technical Sciences; and
  • Technology and Engineering Education.

Agricultural education and business are two of the most popular programs in the state, though manufacturing has enjoyed increased popularity as the sector has grown in the decade since the economic crisis.

Students enrolled in CTE programs are also encouraged to participate in work-based learning opportunities and take industry credentialing examinations. Schools earn additional points toward their “college and career readiness” score for these students. Additionally, the state has an Apprenticeship USA grant to support Registered Apprenticeships. To encourage vertical alignment between secondary and postsecondary CTE programs, Missouri offers dual enrollment opportunities for students to begin earning credit toward a postsecondary degree while they are still enrolled in high school. There is also a representative from the postsecondary system on the state’s CTE Advisory Council (more on that below).

Noteworthy in Missouri: The state legislature recently made two significant changes to the Missouri CTE system. First, it established a CTE Advisory Council, which includes four members from the general assembly and 11 other individuals appointed by the Commissioner of Education. The Council meets four times annually and provides guidance and recommendations on strengthening Missouri’s CTE programs. The Council was convened for the first time in January, 2017.

Another new and notable policy in Missouri is the adoption of a Career Education Certificate that students can earn in addition to their high school diploma. The policy was adopted by the state legislature in 2016, and the Office of College and Career Readiness, with support from the CTE Advisory Council, is in the process of defining the certificate requirements. Under the current proposal, the certificate will be available to CTE concentrators who pass a technical skill assessment or earn an industry-recognized credential, complete work-based learning experiences, and meet certain GPA and attendance requirements. The Office aims to implement the certificate beginning in the 2017-18 school year.

Austin Estes, Policy Associate

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Welcome to Laura Arnold, Kentucky’s new State CTE Director

February 15th, 2017

In September, Laura Arnold was named Kentucky’s State CTE Director, and her path to becoming State Director can be drawn directly back to the many Career Technical Education (CTE) teachers, role models and advisers who encouraged and supported her along the way.

“The CTE world is like a family and really supports students,” Arnold said. “It just shows the importance of teachers in the lives of kids and how they shape students not only in high school but also professionally.”

As a high school student in Kentucky, Arnold served as the state president of the Future Homemakers of America, now known as the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America. After graduation, she earned a home economics degree from the University of Kentucky and soon after, took her first job teaching middle school Family and Consumer Science. Six years later, Arnold received an education leadership certificate and served as a principal at one of the state’s area technology centers for about five years.

In 2011, one of her fellow principals, Dale Winkler, became the State Director and asked Arnold to join him at the Kentucky Department of Education. From 2011-2015, Arnold worked in a variety of roles including, as a curriculum manager and Division director for the 53 state-operated area technology centers.

When Winkler left the state in 2015, Arnold was tapped to serve as the interim State Director, and continued in that role until being officially named to the position in September 2016.

Arnold is a key player in the state’s New Skills for Youth initiative. Kentucky was recently awarded $2 million to continue its efforts to strengthen and expand career education pathways for students. Check out this snapshot of the state’s initial work.

Moving forward, the state is examining how it might shift its delivery of K-12 CTE to a regional approach that lets school districts and area technology centers collaborate in order to provide more access to quality programs. This major shift would also require new partnerships and approaches to funding.

“I think we have to think outside of the box, and do things differently than we ever have before,” Arnold said.

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate for Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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Welcome to Elaine Perea, New Mexico’s State CTE Director!

February 2nd, 2017

When Elaine Perea was studying ancient Greek philosophers at St. John’s College in 1990, she never imagined she would one day become the State Director for Career Technical Education (CTE) in New Mexico.

Yet, her first job after graduating was as a bookkeeper, and she soon realized she had a knack for numbers and finance. This led into varied career in business including accounting and eventually to an investment company where she bought commercial office buildings. Over time, however, this began to wear, she said. So Perea decided to return to college once more; this time, to earn her doctorate in social psychology and enter the next phase of her professional career – as a college professor in Florida, where she taught for three years.

But New Mexico was home, so when a position became available over two years ago in the state’s Public Education Department, she was able to leverage her unique blend of business experience and teaching to get hired as an Education Administrator. Shortly after joining the department, she assumed additional responsibilities as the Deputy Director of CTE.

After being named as the State CTE Director in January, Perea said she intends to continue focusing on how to increase secondary students’ access to CTE. In New Mexico, roughly half of school districts have fewer than 200 students and many struggle to offer a three-course program of study due to enrollments and resources.

Perea also said another of her top priorities is to increase the use of dual credit courses in secondary CTE programs, and to encourage students to take such courses as part of their program sequence. To do this, Perea said she is working closely with the state bodies that govern higher education enrollment policies.

“We believe dual credit is an important tool in supporting rigorous CTE programs and helping students get the credentials they need for entering into the workforce,” Perea said.

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate for Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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Welcome to Quentin Suffren, Texas’ New State CTE Director!

January 24th, 2017

Quentin Suffren admits he’s not your usual State Director for Career Technical Education (CTE).

For more than 16 years, Suffren worked in both the nonprofit and private sectors, leading large-scale education projects such as managing data and reporting systems with the New York-based Amplify Education, implementing a teacher evaluation system with The New Teacher Project in Houston, Texas, and serving as the chief academic officer for The Learning Institute.

In August 2016, he joined the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to serve as the Executive Director for College, Career and Military Prep, which includes the state’s CTE office.

The TEA reorganized last year, and as a result, CTE gained a higher profile within the department when the state joined the Pathways to Prosperity Network, which is a group of states working to build seamless career pathway systems that link high school, work and postsecondary education. The career pathways initiative is what brought Suffren to the agency, and since joining in August, has been working to coordinate the state’s efforts.

“What became really clear as I joined TEA, a lot of those pathways run directly through CTE,” Suffren said. “This puts CTE in the limelight and acknowledges that it is direct preparatory pathway to college and careers.”

In his new role, Suffren said he is looking forward to finding new and better ways to increase students’ access to high quality career pathways, expanding college and career counseling for all students and their parents, and removing barriers to work-based learning.

“It’s not college or career anymore. It’s both, and CTE is a huge part of that,” Suffren said.

Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate of Member Engagement and Leadership Development

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